Google goes to the Grand Canyon

By Suemedha Sood

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The Grand Canyon’s other side

The North Rim has fewer crowds than the South

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Black Bridge
Many of us have spent hours on Google Street View exploring cities as if we were there, clicking-and-dragging through them, block by block by block. But before today, we’ve never had the same success virtually trekking through the world’s national parks. We’ve spent far more time than we’re willing to admit “walking” the little Street View guy around the all-green parts of the map, just trying to find one measly trail we can explore as if on foot. Oh, tiny Street View man, how you toy with us.

But starting today, travellers can digitally explore the first of what we hope to be many national parks from an on-the-ground vantage point. The Google Street View team has taken their panoramic photographic technology into the wilderness with Street View Trekker, a new camera system worn as a backpack. The result? An up-close, 360-degree journey into one of the most awe-inspiring natural wonders on Earth: the Grand Canyon.

Following are some of the breathtaking panoramas Trekker has witnessed – among the first images ever to be published from this new backpacking camera system. Pictured here, travellers can take in the Grand Canyon’s spectacular red rocks above and the glistening Colorado River below from Black Bridge, a wooden suspension bridge built in 1928 to connect the trails between the North and South Rim of the canyon.

Black Bridge

Many of us have spent hours on Google Street View exploring cities as if we were there, clicking-and-dragging through them, block by block by block. But before today, we’ve never had the same success virtually trekking through the world’s national parks. We’ve spent far more time than we’re willing to admit “walking” the little Street View guy around the all-green parts of the map, just trying to find one measly trail we can explore as if on foot. Oh, tiny Street View man, how you toy with us.

But starting today, travellers can digitally explore the first of what we hope to be many national parks from an on-the-ground vantage point. The Google Street View team has taken their panoramic photographic technology into the wilderness with Street View Trekker, a new camera system worn as a backpack. The result? An up-close, 360-degree journey into one of the most awe-inspiring natural wonders on Earth: the Grand Canyon.

Following are some of the breathtaking panoramas Trekker has witnessed – among the first images ever to be published from this new backpacking camera system. Pictured here, travellers can take in the Grand Canyon’s spectacular red rocks above and the glistening Colorado River below from Black Bridge, a wooden suspension bridge built in 1928 to connect the trails between the North and South Rim of the canyon.